Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho again jumped to the defence of recently-departed friend Aitor Karanka following his side's 3-1 win at the Riverside.

Life after the Spaniard began with a defeat for Boro , with Steve Agnew's side sunk by goals from Marouane Fellaini, Jesse Lingard and Antonio Valencia.

It's been a turbulent few days on Teesside following Karanka's dismissal, and after the game Mourinho repeated how his former Real Madrid No 2 had the chance to leave Boro on several occasions during his tenure for "better" options.

Asked whether Man Utd's win was 'justice for Karanka', Mourinho said: "Justice for Karanka is the work he did here.

"People can't believe the good things we do at clubs, but it doesn't matter what happens. I was sacked by Chelsea, people now don't like me but nobody can go there and repeat what I did.

"Aitor came here with 8,000 or 10,000 people in the stadium, almost going down to League 1.

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Lingard then doubled the visitors' advantage in the second half, but Rudy Gestede brought Boro back into the game - before Antonio Valencia's late sucker punch following a mistake by goalkeeper Victor Valdes.

"We changed a lot of players, we had to do that, we tried to protect others by the way we played," Mourinho said.

"For example, Valencia played in a position where I tried to protect him a bit rather than 100m up and down, I tried to protect the central defenders in the last part of the game by bringing on another, I had to protect Mata after 60 minutes because he played 90 against Rostov.

Marouane Fellaini celebrates (Image: Getty Images Europe)

"I have no midfield players on the bench so had to go with Carrick and Fellaini for 90 for sure, because we didn't have another, so we had to build something to do what we did in the first half - as we played very well.

"There was no shots on our goal (in the first half), thewe had big chances and they couldn't cope with our movement. Bernardo & Gibson (don't have) the pace of Rashford or Lingard so we created a lot of problems, but in the second half they caused us problems.